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True Liberalism versus today’s cheap imitation

Harry Truman, from Missouri, integrated the military and began an important work that would help lead to Civil Rights in regular American life.

Dwight Eisenhower, though a Republican, sought to liberalize things that made sense. He attempted the first true Civil Rights legislation, but was voted down in Congress. He succeeded in building a national highway system, which opened the door for free enterprise and jobs to expand as we have it now.

John F. Kennedy pushed for a tax cut, opposed communism and sought to use government in ways to truly expand society. He would have passed Civil Rights legislation, which was left for LBJ’s legacy after his untimely death. This came to pass in spite many Democrats in Congress voting against the Civil Rights Act (including Al Gore’s father). LBJ signed the Bill with the help and liberality of the Republican party!

Today, however, we often see those who claim to be liberals giving mixed signals. They ostensibly are for women’s rights, yet most were silent on Bill Clinton’s and others’ affairs. While Bill Clinton was a true liberal on many things, this event brought out the false liberals to defend him at any cost: including the misogynist harming of women and viewing/treating them as objects, rather than as individuals.

When Pres Obama had majorities in both houses of Congress, he had a true chance of passing liberal immigration reform, but let it pass so that he could use up all of his political capital on the unpopular and less than liberal (but progressive pro-big government) Obamacare.

Today in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan compares the “liberal” mayor DeBlasio of New York with the “moderate” governor Cuomo. DeBlasio seeks to end charter schools in NYC, in a bid to pay off his teachers’ union cronies, while sending poor kids back to impoverished and failing schools. True liberals would seek to help the kids, not empower unions or big government that gets in the way of their success.

Post-modern liberals attack Congressman Darrell Issa for following protocol on his investigation of the IRS, because he would not allow democratic Congressman Cummings to grandstand during the period specifically set aside to only ask questions. Meanwhile, “liberal” IRS worker Lois Lerner took advantage of her Constitutional right to plead the 5th Amendment rather than testify on whether the IRS was abusing its power against the constitutional rights of conservative organizations.

Liberals of the past used government cautiously, insisted on balanced budgets, and ensured decisions did not risk harming the rights of individuals. Many of today’s false “liberals” defend the NSA snooping, trillion dollar deficits, drone attacks on Americans, etc. It is a cancer that is killing our nation.

I applaud Governor Cuomo for taking a true liberal stance FOR the children of New York. I wish those who pretend to be liberals would change and truly stand for those liberal concepts that defend the Bill of Rights and increase freedom for all Americans, rather than be the “progressives” that seek to grab power and get gain in any way they can as a political machine. This holds true for both major political parties, as there are many Democrats and Republicans who only seek power and to pay back their cronies, rather than seek the best for America in liberty.

” They ostensibly are for women’s rights, yet most were silent on Bill Clinton’s and others’ affairs.”

I’d like to zone in on this. It isn’t simply *just* that Bill Clinton had affairs. That, in and of itself, is not surprising. JFK was an inveterate adulterer as well.

It’s that Kathleen Willey accused him of attempted ***rape***, a felonious assault. And she’s one of many that spoke up about Mr. Clinton’s inability to keep his zipper up and his hands off. What was her reward? Scorn from her erstwhile and ersatz fellow Democrts.

In other words, not only did Clinton indulge in boss-employee ethical lapse (fooling around with a White House intern), but in Willey’s case, *he tried to ***rape*** her*. Here we have a situation where a powerful male is doing terrible things with less powerful females — and the feminist world was ***totally silent***. You didn’t hear a word from them. I’ll tell you why. Bill Clinton was bringing them the bacon. He was funnelling money, influence, and spoils, and prestige. And the price they had to pay was to ignore their “principles” why he got to do whatever he wanted to the females who worked for him.

Pure, unadulterated hypocrisy. Dripping hypocrisy. Rank hypocrisy.

Thus, until the radical feminist side completely repudiates Bill Clinton, and by extension, repudiates the spouse – Hillary Clinton – who enabled his terrible behavior, you can’t take anything they say seriously. They have no moral capital. Period. Full stop.

People use the term “liberal” in many different ways of course, but I prefer to stick to its etymology: liberal would mean protecting freedom and diversity. I think its important to distinguish between liberal and progressive. A true liberal is epitomized by the UCLA, which defends the liberties of gays on the one hand, and Nazis on the other. A true liberal would allow churches like ours to be as conservative as we want to be, because that adds to the diversity of the populace.

A progressive is one who is guided by utopian visions and seeks to use compulsion to reorder society according to that vision.

Jim, I agree that labels can change. There are some we can attempt to reclaim, by framing our discussion and defining terms. Sadly, some terms are gone forever, such as “gay”. Interesting that they would take such a term, when most gays I know are not so, well, “gay”.

Michael, I agree with the concerns on the accusations of rape. The Congress is just now putting forward a new law for the military that states when a military person is found guilty of rape, his/her previous military record will not be taken into consideration in determining the sanctions, etc. Bill Clinton was allowed to break laws and risked extortion from knowing parties (a very bad position for a sitting president), because many people liked other things he was doing. I agree that the National Organization of Women (NOW) and other groups have lost their right to complain against anyone else, because they sold their soul for a mess of pottage.

Nate, I agree that there is a difference between true liberals and progressives, which is why in my OP, I used both terms and placed liberal in quotes whenever it was used to reference false liberals. There are very few true liberals left. Most of them fled the Democratic party back in the 1980s and became Reagan Democrats. I remember liberal Senator Sam Nunn (D Georgia), as he retired from Congress say that he did not leave the Democratic party, it left him! He was a man that was respected on both sides of the aisle. Of course, liberal Joe Lieberman has also tasted the wrath of progressives that wrap themselves up in liberalism, as do wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Of course, the Republican party has many who pretend to be conservative, who in reality are also progressives that seek to retain power by bribing their own group of constituents and silencing the conservative/liberals in their own party like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, etc.

We can see that those who seek to get gain have infiltrated both parties. Both parties have increased our deficit immensely, reduced our freedoms, and seek to gain even more power. The difference in the two parties? There is a greater voice in the Republican party that is fighting for true conservatism/liberalism and freedom; while most true liberals in the Democratic party have been silenced. This is why former Governor Crist of Florida can so easily switch parties: he was not able to fight off the good guys (which include the Tea Party and Libertarians) in the Republican party, but fits in well among the power seekers in the Democratic party.

Students in public school score better than charter school students. That is a fact. If I asserted that this proves that the latter are failing schools and the former are bad ones, I would be just as simplistic and/or misguided as many of the comments made by the blogger and many respondents.

A careful reading of Diane Ravitch’s New York Review of Books November 11, 2010 article, “The Myth of Charter Schools” would show the danger of simply watching movies like “Waiting for Superman” and thus viewing Charter Schools as the savior of American Education. A simple google exploration would show many additional problems with charters: not providing special education programs in charters ( too costly and lowers test scores), fraud, disciplining kids out of their programs and back into public schools, etc.

The point simply is that there are good and bad charter schools as well as good and bad public schools. Don’t just label one better or worse without a careful examination of each individual school.

Also, one of the difficulties in NYC is that the individual having the fight with Di Basio is a Charter School leader who wants to have NYC give public schools to her Charters without cost. The debate is more than just is what type of school is better. Additionally, Cuomo’s campaign for governor was partially financed by many of the Wall Street funders and supporters of those particular Charters.

LBK, some students in some public schools score higher than some students in some charter schools. That is a fact. There are some charter school programs that are heads above the local public schools (especially when it comes to inner city schools). Unless you’ve actually spent time working inner city issues, you cannot appreciate it. I recommend you watch the film, Waiting for Superman.” I’m assuming that you have not watched it from your comment. As it is, the voucher system in DC is bringing poor kids into average or above average scores for 1/3 the cost of public schools. Parents and kids are not forced into charter or private or voucher friendly schools. They are optional. Yet, there are always huge lines of people seeking to get their kids into them, rather than keep them in the terrible public schools in the inner cities.

No system is perfect. There will always be a need for some public schooling, such as for the disabled. However, government involvement is destroying many minds – and is often bound to the teachers’ unions, rather than in helping kids.

As for fraud, have you noted the many public schools now under investigation (Atlanta, Washington DC, etc) for mass fraud on testing? The Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper has a series on it here: http://www.ajc.com/s/news/school-test-scores/

There are many states/towns that give old/failed school buildings to the charter schools to use. DeBlasio does not want to do it, because he wants a bigger tax base for his policies and it means taking buildings away from teachers’ unions (and their failing schools).

Where I live, the public schools are great. However, you go 15 miles to the inner city of Indianapolis, and there are a bunch of failing schools. 51% of kids graduate from those schools, with 49% drop out rate. No one is talking about replacing the good schools. Most charter and voucher/private schools are in poorer areas, where the schools are failing. Where a charter school is more expensive or failing to provide a quality program, they can be replaced, and often are by not renewing the contract with that company. However, replacing a bad public school and/or teacher is next to impossible in many places. Imagine a teacher that was accused of abusing kids, and the evidence was there on it, but it takes 5 more years to get her fired. That’s a real event, my friend. The teachers’ union fought to keep her.

The issue I brought up in regards to schools in New York City is that the public schools were failing miserably. The charter schools were doing great, and for less money. DeBlasio wants to get rid of the charter schools, because the teachers’ unions want the kids back into their schools, regardless of whether they are good or bad schools. Governor Cuomo recognizes this, and so is opposing DeBlasio. It isn’t a Democrat/Republican fight here. It is a progressive/liberal fight going on. One supports the teachers’ unions and failed schools, the other supports the kids and succeeding charter schools.

Let me clear up a couple assumptions that you made and point out a couple of your mistakes.

First, I taught in what was considered an inner city school. Granted, in thirty years I personally only took one gun off a student, ten knives or so, a baseball bat with a spike driven through it and a small collection of brass knuckles, nun chucks and socks with ball bearings. I only got hit twice in the various gang fights and ethnic conflicts while I had to physically restrain a fair number of students. (Thank goodness, their were other factors that made this the best high school to teach at that I could ever imagine).

Yes I did see “Waiting for Superman,” but I also read Ravitch and others that wrote about the “golden charters” that receive tremendous monetary support from wealthy donors. They get to do things for kids that public schools cant even think of doing. Along with them are the private charters often run by crooks or incompetents and many of them are in the inner city.

Finally your example of an abusing teacher taking 5 years to get fired. Doesn’t happen here in California. It is a crime if a teacher or principal thinks there is a child being abused and does not report it to authorities. If it is sexual abuse the teacher must be suspended immediately. It takes about 4-6 months for a district to fire a teacher in a case of any type of abuse. What takes longer is when districts wait for a criminal conviction and the state takes care of ending the teachers career as well as absorbing some of the cost. I cannot believe any district (or its insurance company) in this day of instant litigation allowing such a person back in the classroom.